Digital Music Subscription services

Recently, I bought myself a Creative Muvo2 digital music device. It's a 4 gig device which is way more than I need to store all my CDs at 128 kps. I can also use it as a device to move data around. It's a nice device for me to wait until the portable media centers come out.

One thing I've been looking at recently is the digital music stores. I haven't quite dived into the whole digital music online store thing yet. 99 cents seems fine for individual songs, but what I'm more interested in is subscription services like what Napster has. Unfortunately, I don't like the select of songs on Napster which is why I haven't signed up yet (also, public news reports have said MSN is going to come out with a store and I'm hoping there will be some kind of employee discount). I currently use Listen.com for a digital music subscription service. It has a good selection and a much better interface but unfortunately it requires that I be seated at a computer to listen to anything. A few months ago, Microsoft announced “Janus”, a DRM mechanism which allows for subscription services to work for portable devices. I'm most interested in this but I've found it interesting that a lot of people said they wouldn't like anything like this at all. Does everyone feel like this? Or did I just go to a forum where the sample of users doesn't like subscription services?

Personally I think subscription services are where we’ll end up eventually. At least, it’s one of the few reasonable suggestions I’ve heard lately 🙂

I mean, if you were to figure 99 cents for each mp3 track on my computer (factoring out the legal live recordings, of which I have a great many), and you still get a pretty big number. Just think, Apple says the iPod is "10,000 songs in your pocket." But to fill it, they expect you to pay 10 grand?

That pricing, combined with the abyssmal audio quality offered by Apple’s store, and the lack of selection on Napster, is why I don’t currently use any of those online stores. I’m also hoping Microsoft/MSN does one soon, and does it right. I want WM9 audio (preferrably 85-130k VBR or better) and a huge selection. And I want it as a subscription service that will let me transfer files to my PCs and iRiver player.